1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a medical robot, and more particularly, to a medical robot that may be aimed at a treatment area accurately and rapidly.
2. Description of the Related Art
Radiation therapy is a form of treatment to kill cancer cells using high-energy radiation. Radiation refers to a material mediating propagation or a phenomenon of energy propagating through a space, and an X-ray is a typical example of the radiation.
Radiation therapy is one of the three most prevalent cancer treatments, in company with surgery and chemotherapy. In general, radiation therapy may not require hospitalization, take a few to about 30 minutes per day, and be painless during treatment.
As radiation therapy apparatuses, X-Knife (Radionics, U.S.A.), Novalis Tx (BrainLAB, Germany), Peacok (NOMOS Corp., U.S.A.), Trilogy (Varian Medical System, U.S.A.), and CyberKnife (Accuray Inc., U.S.A.) are known. Many of the radiation therapy apparatuses are evolving to reduce an error occurring during treatment and increase an accuracy based on technology of Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) and a linear accelerator.
CyberKnife is a high-precision stereotactic radiation therapy exclusive apparatus that may intensively irradiate a tumor portion in various directions by providing a small linear accelerator to a robot arm freely moving with six joints.
CyberKnife may provide a precise treatment by tracking coordinates of a gold marker inserted into a body and a skeleton image using real-time image guided technology, without an invasive fixing device. In addition, contrary to Gamma Knife used to treat brain tumors, CyberKnife may be used to treat cancer throughout a human body. Further, CyberKnite may be used for fractionated radiation therapy administered a few times, rather than once.
Recently, research is being conducted on CyberKnife. For example, Korean Patent Application No. 2009-0038051, filed on Apr. 30, 2009, discloses “System for radiotherapy planning information viewer”.